haha if he DIDN'T stay down and beat the girls, then he would just be an even more powerful character in the series. He fought a ******* monster that literally defied logic and beat him and all in all =S my main point is that he defies the original trope of what this post was about.

Bleach is actually a superb Anime. Some of the best fight scenes ans artwork around. There are some filler arcs though, so that sucks. But The story progresses into very intense battles and stories. It ia s solid 8/10. Worth the time you put in

Yeahno. No, Bleach is a mediocre anime at best. The Karakura town arc? That **** is golden. That is 8/9/10 out of 10 level stuff. Filled with interesting characters, designs, and dilemmas.

Then the Soul Society arc happens. It's not a bad arc by any means but it completely changes the pace, themes, and tone of the series. From then-on Hollows ceased to be a threat and we would never get to see another story like Inoue and her brother or Chad and the parakeet again.

I'm all for change but if you change something you have to be sure you're headed somewhere better than where you already were and what the Soul Society arc did was replace the visually distinct, mechanically dynamic, and emotionally driven fights with monsters with fights where people with swords hit other people with swords.

There are some good fights in that arc like Ichigo vs Ikaku and even Ichigo vs Kenpachi is pretty badass. However the fight with Byakuya ramps the power levels up over 9000. It gives a visually distinct and interesting fight but at the cost of the best elements of the series. Suddenly Ichigo is about the most powerful Shinigami there is so all pre-established threats cease to be threats anymore.

Then Aizen happens and cranks those power levels through the roof because someone's gotta be stronger than Ichigo now. It's neat and seeing Aizen change from kind and cuddly to badass and intimidating just with a flick of his hair and tossing aside his specs is pretty cool, however it still carries with it the issue that it kills any chance we're ever going to go back to that status quo again. Suddenly Tatsuki, Karin, and Yuzu cease being important and Chad doesn't do anything of value for the rest of the series. Orihime stays important and Rukia still matters but at the cost of everything that had previously been established.

Bleach goes from fantastic to passible in the course of an arc and from there on out it devolves to a slightly more visually interesting DBZ.

To each their own, DBZ is still loved and adored by a large population, so even if it is just a visually better DBZ, it still has a fan base. I agree with the soul society arc comment, but the fights later in the show do make up for it for me.

Also, don't be a ******* bitch, tjflash. I'm not gonna thumb you down because you put the word 'DBZ' in your damned comment. Not everyone on this site is a cunt and the ones that are cunts won't spare the time of day to be as critical and generous about **** they don't like as I will.

I don't hold it against you, but have a little more faith in your words. Plus, what... if people gang up on you you'll get like, five, maybe ten red thumbs? A decent comment can earn you ten times that easily.

I'm sorry, what? I've been diligently making a 1,000 count Pop-It bomb for FJ. I have no idea who the anon is. Everyone has their own opinion ans I can totally agree. I never finished Bleach (only got to ep 120ish)

Yeah, but I ran out of space to point out that whilst it is more visually engaging it is lacking in basically everything that made DBZ any good. It is too complicated and has its head too far up its own arse to have the simplicity of DBZ.

DBZ is good because it is pure. It is the most generic elements of a shounen battle series done to perfection. No muss, no fuss. It is pretty much the measuring stick with which you judge how shounen a shounen series is.

Bleach though devolves into being very repetitive and wholly unsatisfying. What elements do work about it are dragged down by the ones that don't and whereas DBZ earns an 8/10 I'd personally give Bleach a 5, and that's being generous.

It's not a good series. It's a fantastic spectacle but the moment you start thinking about it or analysing it critically it falls apart completely. It's narrative failures are so apparent that almost everyone, wether they knew how to deconstruct a series or not, knew the Aizen fight was ********, and when you can't even convince the casual viewers that your series is well-written, you know you've failed hard somewhere along the line.

The first Arc of the show is amazing and i highly recommend watching it.

It is about a 15 year old high school student (Ichigo) who can see ghosts/spirits. He meets a death god(Rukia) who gets injured and has to transfers her powers to him. However when the other death gods find out they are angry and track him down. but he slowly finds his own death god powers within fighting off other death gods and risking his own life to save (Rukia)

For starters, a Manga. Yeah, it's black and white and the pics don't move but who needs it to when it is illustrated like this! (image related)

That right there is Kingdom. It's a manga about the Waring States period in ancient china and the battles that took place there and holy ******* **** is it good. If bleach is a 5/10 this is a 10, no contest. It's not some uber-satisfying "Main character is so strong he ***** the ground to pieces by swinging his sword" shounen, it's a down and dirty "Everyone can die from one wrong hit" series. Because the battles take place between tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of men at a time the fights stop being about who hits the other hardest (though there is a lot of that) but mire about who is the best at warfare.

Because of that no two battles ever play out the same and the series is filled with an amazing amount of creativity and some wonderful, however minor, elements of period-appropriate fantasy.

There is an anime but don't bother with it. It's mostly done in CG and misses out a lot of stuff including an entire arc. Give it a try, seriously, this is top-teir shounen battle manga.

One Piece: (Obligatory)

If you've not watched the series yet, message me back and tell me why and I'll see if I can't convince you otherwise. It's genuinely a lot better than people who haven't seen it ever give it credit for and even than some of the people who 'do' read it, but don't quite see all of the genius work that exists inside it.

Could someone give me an honest answer? Is SAO worth watching? I heard it was good for the first few EP but then started to suck. I also heard that the time skips are very confusing. So what's up? Worth watching or nah?

Really the first arc is pretty good (first 14 eps) but after that it turns straight to ****. The whole story just loses its momentum and it loses what made the show worth watching and fun: if you die in-game, you die in real life

Eh... sometimes. If you're okay with the "strong female" character turning weak and Princess Peach like it's fine. The time skips are horrible; they could have made much better stories in between the "major" events. Seriously though; it's okay, just a bit over-hyped.

I'd say no. The story presents a premise you've heard of many times before, if you die in the game you die in real life. The show does bring about some interesting conflicts and problems though.

Instead of focusing on those, the show decides to spend episodes and episodes on a love interest between two characters that are just really bland. With a unique world with interesting problems that are hinted at, you don't want to watch 3 episodes watching boring characters play house.

There are some really odd choices about time cuts. They spend about 2 minutes on a character that dies, and then cut ahead a couple months, and apparently they are all the main character can think of? The show spends the next 30 episodes having flashbacks to this character you saw 2 minutes of.

Really convoluted plot holes as well. As the show goes on what limited plot there is just falls apart.

That said, Sao has some of my favorite artwork of all time and some very well done animations/ fights, and the few glimpses you get of the really interesting world make it not an absolute train wreck.

I say this, the love scenes are made to draw you away from the present danger. Its made to show you that the main characters are real humans with real emotions stuck in a bad situation. They give you that one episode away from the hell to kinda make you feel like things are going to be ok, but then they throw you right back into the fray to say "this is reality, you can't run from your problems. You have to fight." And I think thats amazing.

I'm am going to believe he let kirito win because he liked kirito's determination.
that's the only way i can accept this. for the fact that asuna broke game mechanics to move, heathcliff magically teleported 3 feet back when asuna jumped in the way, and heathcliff saw this *********** move and get out the way during kirito's death.

Yea I agree. I think he saw himself in Kirito, and thats why he "saves" him later on in Asfel Online or whatever the fairy ******** was. I think he wanted him to continue his legacy of MMO's. Just finished the series today actually after binging it lol.

Yeah. Other than the ******** with Heathcliff and the fact that Asuna was a total damsel in distress in Alfheim the show was awesome. I actually didn't have a problem with the Alfheim part. The world looked cool and I liked the take they had on magic despite it being your standard "yelling the name of an attack" cliche in anime. In terms of a game it was cool.

i didn hate the aflhiem arc. that seems to be everyone's issue with this show. to me was the second half of the first season when the show went from an action/adventure genre to a romantic/adventure one. total letdown/disappointment.

Also just because there was some romance doesn't mean it wasn't a good action anime. It just had some lovey dovey stuff in it. That didn't take away from Inuyasha and in my opinion it doesn't take away from SAO.

Reminds me of Samurai X, where the young samurai faces off against the superhuman assassin, his companions dying before him proclaiming that he must live for the sake of his beautiful fiancee, then proceeds to be defeated by the swordsman with clearly superior skill, until when all hope seems lost, the image of his fiancee flashes before his eyes. His resolve hardened, he manages to get totally ******* killed. 10/10 would watch again

Granted I don't watch that much anime, but Sword of the Stranger is the single finest anime, movie or tv show, I've ever seen. Animation was ******* great, none of the garbage that his content outlines, just a good old fashioned feudal era Japan story. No demon, no magic powers, just swords. Really great stuff.

I started watching this then I was ****** done with Shounen. I mean I liked it when I was 16 but now it's becoming really dumb. Fate/Zero had people actually dying and some interesting twists and I really liked how most of the Servants/Masters were not good or bad but each had their own motivations. 10/10

I must say that Guts vs Wyald (that rapist yeti-neanderthal) was very likely to the standard type of anime/manga fight. Or the fight against Grunbeld (although the last one went to a dead point). Or against the Pirkaf's queen (i dont remember her name).

The thing i liked about that is that it's usually some chick they think of that makes him stronger (which if you look closely, the stick saying "i believe in you" has boobs.)
but in this one, it was the android's voice asking him to protect the planet he got to enjoy so much. even though he was more robot than android, he still felt the beauty of the planet. That **** had me in feelz.
i love bleach! don't get me wrong. i grew up with the series. but tite kubo can't write a fight scene for **** when it comes to ichigo. that ulqiorra fight was so ********, to me it didn't happen.